Obsidian Strategics and A*STAR CRC Launch InfiniCortex Initiative

Today Obsidian Strategics and A*STAR in Singapore announced a worldwide collaboration that will result in a galaxy of supercomputers to open the door for global innovations in science, engineering and business.

It is obvious that there is a definitive need in our industry to design and implement the mathematical tools and related software that will allow supercomputers located in different geo-locations to connect,” said Marek T. Michalewicz, senior director, A*STAR Computational Resource Centre. Through these high-capacity transmission connections, novel applications of long-distance InfiniBand and advances in the application of graph theory will help make the InfiniCortex a reality, regionally and globally.”

Transmitting data across the Pacific – The team will demonstrate a “world’s first” transmission of data at a speed of 100 Gbits/s across the Pacific via subsea optical cables to the Supercomputing 2014 (SC14) conference. This demonstration will break records, as it will deliver data ten times faster than previously recorded transmission speeds between Asia and North America.

Bringing together global partners – Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network (SingAREN) will provide the connectivity within Singapore while Tata Communications will contribute the transpacific capacity on its wholly-owned subsea cables TGN-IA, connecting Singapore to Japan. From there, the connectivity will continue on Tata Communications’ TGN-P across the Pacific to Seattle, where the connection will run to New Orleans using Century Link’s transcontinental fiber, where SCinet will terminate the circuit at the A*STAR booth.

Benchmarking applications through the InfiniCortex initiative – To demonstrate the feasibility and lasting value of the platform, a team from A*STAR, led by Dr. Marek Michalewicz, will overlay an architecture called the InfiniCortex initiative. This initiative is aimed at developing and deploying coordination and scheduling algorithms capable of leveraging the global InfiniBand network to efficiently harness remote supercomputing equipment on single tasks. This initiative is a testimony to A*STAR and Singapore as leaders in High Performance Computing (HPC) and as a major hub for Asian research and education communications.

Longbow and Crossbow devices collectively enable robust enhanced InfiniBand connectivity across a globally distributed array of high performance computer and storage resources, while delivering performance similar to that of local InfiniBand cabling,” said Dr. David Southwell, chief visionary officer, Obsidian. “We couldn’t be more pleased to be an integral part of this unique approach to practical ExaScale computing.”

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